Padlocked
by mercurial2010
Summary: A collection of bits I needed to see from this legendary week, I know I have too much to be completing but these are actually completed one shots! Stendan obviously, T for language of the second part.
1. They're called lovelocks

_A/N: This week has been epic hasn't it? These are just two things I really needed to see after the beauty of what was on screen. I'm going to make this a collection that I may add too, but theyre really just love shots._

_First ones fluffy, second angsty and T for language._

_To all those waiting for What Love Is (including my awesome guest who left a message) I'm really sorry I know I'm a pain in the arse but I have actually written a little bit more today but their smut is coming slowly and proving difficult (weirdly). _

"They're called lovelocks"

"Why are you here?" Ste prompts, for once feeling a breaths distance away from honesty. The only thing he's ever craved from Brendan.

"Cos I love ye," is the answer.

Brendan's gaze drops. Steven had every reason to refuse him. He knew the twists and knots of their relationship were mainly made by his hands. Only a few hours before he had looked right into those beautiful eyes and said he wanted to spend every night with a stranger. And those words had been true. Each conquest had to be a stranger – finished before the climax, because he couldn't think of being with anyone else the way he had always been with Steven. He couldn't stand the thought of being intimate with any other man. And the thought he could be with Steven hadn't even been worth it. But now standing here, stripped bare in Steven's honest fight, he knows there will never be anything more perfect, more worth fighting for than his embrace.

I love you – he said it and his words have rung over the river and back again to them, and Steven is still looking at him like he's fighting his heart. Brendan had hoped his words would be enough, would cause his boy to melt for him once again, but he knows Steven is different now, stronger, prouder. Under his watch he has grown into the only man he is ever going to love.

Brendan's heart shakes with nerves as his fingers curve around the metal object in his pocket. A padlock. He isn't sure he is strong enough to do this, has never felt so weak, so without power. He closes his eyes to search for an inner strength he isn't certain he possesses.

His thoughts rush to another time, a distant memory of when he had been a different man standing on a beach fingers in his pocket playing with a ring of eternity. He thought he was close to love then, thought it could be found in Eileen's smile. But now, as his eyes blink open to see the boy watching him, he knows he had no idea what being in love meant. He was clueless at to what it was to need someone, have to share your life with someone because without them you don't have a purpose.

"Cos I can't live my life without ye. I love ye Steven," Brendan feels a smile forming over those words, if he had known before how good it would feel to say them he would have done it a million times over.

Each promise from Brendan's lips causes Ste's heart to grow, he wants so much to believe him, but there have been so many lies. Even if he could hear the honesty now, how did he know Brendan wasn't just going to run again? Even the man's hands were clenched as though he was seconds away from a fight, as though he was scared. But as Brendan's fingers unfurl he sees a golden object twinkling in the low glow of the bridge lights.

A padlock.

A lovelock as Brendan had called them.

Brendan's shaking fingers turn the lock around to reveal two sets of initials engraved onto the back.

SH & BB.

Ste feels his heart catch. It's theirs.

Brendan's hand hadn't been furled because he was scared - instead it had only been waiting for his to join him, just like his heart had been closed until their love.

Brendan's gaze catches Ste's and his brow raises – asking for permission to fix their love to this spot, this day, for an eternity. There's only one slight nod from Steven but it is all Brendan needs without a word he locks the padlock against the railing.

"If they want the love to last for an eternity – they throw the key in the water," he explains, passing Ste the key, leaving their future, his life, in the boy's hands.

Brendan feels each second drag as Ste inspects the key. Ste reaches into his pocket and removes an object, an item of jewellery branded forever into Brendan's scars. A wedding ring.

Brendan feels his heart thrumming, the thought that Ste could chose Doug burning through him. He can't not see him again, he knows that now. Loosing Ste to that yank would be as unbearable as losing the boy all together. There's a happiness to be found in Ste's heart that is quite possibly the meaning of his existence.

Ste steps away from Brendan, towards the water's edge. He lets the ring fall between his fingers, watches as it lands with a splash into the frozen world beneath. His eyes sting with the tears he had shared at the end of goodbye.

Brendan feels the surge to protect as he sees tears breaking the boy's blue world. But as that blue fixes on him once again he understands everything clearly. He knows Ste just needed one moment to say goodbye.

Silently, Ste helps Brendan through the start of their new chapter. He brings the key up to his lips, kisses it, pulls his arm back and throws it with all his might into the night, the strength demonstrating his conviction that they would work.

Brendan feels his breath disappear with the key, his heart missing its beat as the key fades to black. Ste's eyes reach up to his shining in the light, sparkling with unspent tears of distance and hope.

As Ste looks on, Brendan's gaze is an exploration of every inch. Everywhere he looks he knows every sense, the feel of Ste's knuckles and the down of hair on his fingers, the movement of his throat, the smell of his hair, the taste of his kiss. He knows in his heart that the boy is made for him, that they were made to be together.

Ste's small laugh fills the night and Brendan's lips pull to an instinctive smile though confusion tinges his happiness.

"What?"

"You're looking at me like you want to kiss me!" Ste giggles.

"Well maybe I do."

"Here?" Ste asks, his eyes flashing around the bridge, Brendan's gaze refuse to leave his.

"There's a load of people around!" Ste said, drawing the battle lines of Brendan's last fight.

"Does that matter? I'm looking at the only person I ever want to see."

Ste stares right into those blue eyes like he doesn't know if he can believe the love Brendan speaks of.

"I love you too," he says though his jaw tightens in uncertainty.

As Brendan hears those words a multitude of emotions pass through him, he feels the fresh cold air bite at his extremities, the dizziness from the disused whisky, he feels his heart restart it's beat. It's like those words have the power to heal. Like he's been growing numb through all their missed chances, all the times when he could have kissed him and should have kissed him back and should have said more of what was in his heart. He feels now like the sum of the rejection and the separation has left him heartless and he's only now finding it's beat – in the boy's unrelenting gaze.

"I'm going to kiss you now," Brendan sighs, finally.

His fingers curl, beckoning the boy close and he feels his heart grow with each step his boy makes toward him.


	2. I won't give up on you

_Ste POV_

**"I won't give up on you."**

I've caught his tears, held him to me as he broke. He's let me be his strength, let himself fracture in front of me, and I know, I really know now that he loves me.

Sat now on our kitchen floor, listening to his breathing steadying, I wonder how many few people he's been this person in front of. He cried like I'm the only one to have ever held him. I will fight with everything inside me to ensure he's never alone again.

"You can't forgive me Steven."

It's an instruction.

They're the first words he lets fill the gaps between us - he's still so far in the past.

Sometimes his world looks so dark his eyes are almost grey. I have seen him like this too many times and all I want to do is make him happy, purely happy, so his eyes shine as blue as they did in that hotel room - like sapphires.

"It's in the past."

"What I did to you-"

"Is in the past."

"I broke your fucking rib for crying out loud!"

Anger echoes through him as his bloody knuckles curl to fists once more. I try to reach for his hand, but he pulls away from me, his eyes so intense as he fights the veil of pretence that we've both created these last few days. It was a veil we needed, we had to be part of each other to know that this could work, to know this conversation would be worth it. We needed the true conviction that we have to fight for this.

"OK I don't, not properly, I probably won't in the way that I know there's a small part of Amy that doesn't forgive me. There were times when I truly hated you." He looks at me like that is the only way people should ever feel about him, like deep down he's nothing but evil – God how I hate that look.

"But mostly I don't even remember it, you're different now, you, and there is not one part of me that feels that same way now."

His eyebrow raises, his lips curling as a rushed exhale shows he doesn't quite believe me.

"How do you know you can trust me?" His words are full of self-hatred.

"Cos I know you, and if you keep up the counselling we can get through this."

I can't take the self-hatred that's formed in his heart in one day. In Dublin I began to believe I could be enough to make him like the man he is. Maybe at the very least I could still be enough to make him try.

I place my hand against his cheek and he lets me tilt his face to mine.

"I know you and I love you, right? I love the man you are now and the man you're trying to be. Nothing will change that. It's been like less than two days innit – but I've not felt like this before. I'm proper in love with you."

His eyes don't leave mine, his gaze holding a connection between our hearts.

"You were scared, when I got here, and then when I-" his eyes move to the wall like he's sorry for the pain he could have caused it, his knuckles flexing involuntarily by his side. "You were scared," he gulps like those words are made of his fear.

"For a moment, and not really, I know you wouldn't do that now."

His eyes cloud asking me silently for more.

"It's just cos how you were in the Dog, just memories that's all. Cos of what you were – and then with Frankie," finally the stupidity of my jealousy lies exposed.

"Oh God!" His eyes darken as he snatches my gaze, like he's only just thought of how I would have felt watching him like that.

"I get it," I try to assure him before the panic rises.

"I'm sor- Steven I'm so sorry," it's the most avid apology he's ever given and it's over something so small.

"Christ Brendan! Yeah and I really thought you wanted her and all," I tease to pull his smile. "Cos she can give you what I can."

There's a small puff of air from his lips, a mark of humour. And then his eyes flash like he's grateful, he will never feel worthy of the love I have for him.

"No-one," he says, placing his fingers against my cheek before he continues. "There is not one other person in this world who can give me what you give me."

"That cos you love me?" I sing, and this time I even get a tuneful laugh.

They are words that were doubted by each fragment of my broken heart two days ago. Now they're a conviction.

"That's because I love you." He says slowly so the words drift over my skin. "And I'm going to kiss you now, cos I love you," he says using those words that are indelibly, ineradicably bound around our hearts.

His lips are soft against mine, just once, like just one single embrace can provide a cure. I smile and he comes back for another kiss, once, twice, three times more. The sensuality causing my eyes to slip closed pulling a sigh from my lips. His forehead finds it's repose against mine. I gaze into his eyes, bluer but not quite sapphire - that's enough for now.

"I'll wait for you," I promise. "We don't have to do this, not yet. I'm at the end of a phone, or a text, or I'm just here, whenever, right? "

"I wanna tell him," he says with decree but even his words shake.

"I know, but you don't have to, I've waited two years Brendan, I can wait a little longer to be with you."

He rocks back against the oven as his eyes flash over my words, there's something there that made him sad.

"OK?" I say, caressing the lines in his forehead, smoothing out the worry.

His hand hovers over mine, pulls my fingers down to his kiss.

"And if I can't - wait? If I can't do that either." He says, his words are dark but there's joy in his eyes – he's telling me he loves me, telling me he doesn't want to let go of our forever.

"Then we'll run away together, I dunno – Vegas?!" I joke thinking only of how this all started with two nights of gambling.

"Vegas?!" He laughs. "Steven the people who run away to Las Vegas are eloping!"

Instinctively I bite at the inside of my lip, if my stupidity has pushed him too far again, but all he does is smile.

"We goin there then?" I joke, but his eyes dip in that serious way that pulls at my soul.

"One day, it'll be my honour."

He rests back against the oven, and my body copies his, my eyes investigate his face – did he really just propose? His eyes find mine and he laughs sweetly, looping an arm around my shoulders, pulling me against him so I'm tilted into his embrace. His eyes drift close, as he breathes deeply. I turn to face his chest as my gaze trails over him, he looks like he'd be happy here for an eternity. He pushes his head down into the side of my neck and just stays, his breath warm against my skin, rebounding from my own. Our hearts calming to the same rhythm. He creates a world in which it's just us, his embrace ensuring it is only him I can see. I would be happy forever with just a few moments like this. We stop. Occasionally his nose runs against the underside of my jaw, or up past my ear and I get that feeling that he's using everything he has to sense me; sometimes his lips press against my pulse point, mostly though we just enjoy the consuming wrap of our presence alone.

It's his mobile that breaks the reverie as he receives a text, and he grumbles as I let him release me. But before I get too far his fingers trail up my neck into my hair and he just holds me, he doesn't kiss me, just keeps my face against his, and as I look into his eyes I sigh – they're sapphires once more.

He pulls away and reaches for his phone, and the darkness comes back.

"It's Cheryl, she wants me back for dinner." he says looking so vulnerable and hopeless.

I loop my fingers around his, smiling as he lets me. I bring his knuckles to my lips, soothing their broken skin with my mouth, trying to tell him that I'll catch him every time he stumbles, hold him every time he aches.

"I - I don't know if I'm strong enough for this."

"I know that we are," I tell him.


End file.
